Saugstad is married to fellow professional skier and free rider Cody Townsend, 28, of Santa Cruz. Townsend, who graduated from Aptos High School in 2001, has also survived avalanches but was not with the group Sunday.

Saugstad was 12 friends skiing through a foot and a half of fresh snow on the back side of Stevens Pass when the avalanche hit. Stevens Pass is in the Cascade Mountains, about 80 miles northeast of Seattle.

"Essentially (the airbag) keeps you above the avalanche. It's not like an inner tube ride down the snow. It's more like you're in a washing machine being flipped and tumbled, and it's white the entire way," she said.

The airbag keeps a skier high enough up within the avalanch so that they can still breath and be dug out by rescuers once the avalanche stops.

"I had to wait for my friends to come unbury me," she said. "I'm still in shock."

The three skiers who died were Johnny Brenan, Jim Jack and Chris Rudolph, according to Stevens Pass Winter Resort's Facebook page.

All 12 of the expert skiers were buried to some extent, but the three who died were swept 1,500 feet down a chute in the Tunnel Creek Canyon area, King County sheriff's Sgt. Katie Larson said.

The others were able to free themselves and rushed to dig out the victims. They performed CPR on the three men to no avail, Larson said.

"Most of the people involved in this were well-known to the ski community up here, especially to the ski patrol," said Deputy Chris Bedker of the sheriff's search-and-rescue unit. "It was their friends who they recovered."

The Northwest Weather and Avalanche Center on Sunday issued a warning for high avalanche danger for areas above 5,000 feet, saying warmer weather could loosen surface snow and trigger a slide on steeper slopes.

John Gifford, the ski area's general manager, said Sunday that the resort had received 19 inches of snow in the past 24 hours. Stevens Pass is one of the most popular outdoor recreation areas in the state.

It's been a deadly winter in Washington's mountains. Four people disappeared in vicious storms while camping and climbing on Mount Rainier last month. The four remain missing, and authorities have said they're hoping to find their bodies when the snow melts this summer.

Across the West, there had been 13 avalanche deaths this season as of Thursday, according to the Colorado Avalanche Information Center, which tracks avalanche deaths in the U.S.

Experts have said the risk of additional slides in the region could remain high all season. They attribute the dangers in part to a weak base layer of snow caused by a dry winter.

Also Sunday, a snowboarder was killed in a separate incident at the Alpental ski area. The snowboarder, a man, went over a cliff.